Tag Archives: medicine bottles

I got a letter in the mail the other day and meant to post about it, and then I noticed an upsurge in the number of people finding my blog by searching for information on this project, so figured I’d better get the info up here.

The letter was from the Malawi Project and explains that they’ve received 1 million pill containers and had decided to conclude that program and shift to other focuses. (These other focuses sound fantastic, and you can find out more about them on The Malawi Project’s webpage.)

Anyways, if you came here looking for information on that, there you go. If you know about other places people can send their used medicine bottles, please leave the info in the comments – I can’t be the only one who had been ready to prepare a second batch.

If you haven’t read it already, here’s my piece on taking part in this project. I now keep a box of empty bottles in my kitchen so I can save up and get ready to send another box full of bottles.

If you take medication (regularly or just once in a while) consider saving up your medicine bottles to pass on to this fantastic project! If not, they also take monetary donations – each shipment of bottles costs quite a bit to send, so every little bit helps.

Early on in dealing with the back injury that laid me low last year, I realized there were going to be a good number of prescription medication bottles floating around my apartment. I couldn’t stand the idea of throwing them all away. Thinking of the sad state of American medical care, I thought, “There’s got to be some kind of art project in this.”

I thought my chance had come last Halloween, when my friend and I did a joint costume at a science-themed Halloween party. She was “old medicine” (Victorian dress and a bottle of “snake oil,” a.k.a. whisky) and I was “new medicine” (a fluorescent orange t-shirt with a billion empty prescription bottles hot-glued on) and the whole thing was pretty hilarious.

After the party, though, I still couldn’t bring myself to throw away all those little orange bottles. So I threw them in a storage container and figured, sooner or later I’d find the reason I was hanging onto them.

That reason turned up in my Facebook feed the other day. A friend posted a plea from a group called The Malawi Project, asking that people clean and donate their old medicine bottles to help provide safe and clean medication storage to the people of Malawi.

Earlier tonight, I started cleaning my old medicine bottles. It took two and a half hours, but I boiled, scraped and cleaned each bottle (the remnants of glue were particularly annoying). It wasn’t fast, but after a while I got into a rhythm, and at the end I had a full box of medicine bottles that I’m going to post out to the Malawi project this week.

I know a lot of people who take regular medication, and while it’s a little time consuming, this is such a great way to help others and keep plastic out of landfills. Set up your laptop, start up a show you enjoy, and presto – a few hours later, you’ll have done something to help others in a really concrete way. And if you do, leave a note below – and help spread the word!